Top GOP House Reps Back Bold Energy Agenda: The American Energy First Act

September 12, 2019

While the environmental left and 2020 presidential contenders continue to embrace extreme, dangerous policies like the “Green New Deal,” others in Congress are going in the opposite direction, backing a bold energy agenda that would help further propel America into energy independence and energy dominance.

Politico reports that senior House Republicans have offered “their alternative vision for federal onshore and offshore energy policy with legislation aimed at sharply reducing the obstacles toward constructing new projects.”

The legislation, called the American Energy First Act, is supported by House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, Republican Conference Chairwoman Liz Cheney, and Natural Resources Ranking Member Rep. Rob Bishop.

The plan is simple: open up American energy and unleash a torrent of jobs and economic growth. As Politico notes, the bill would “open the eastern Gulf of Mexico to drilling, require deference to state rules governing fracking on public lands, create new categorical exclusions for oil and gas permitting, and require congressional approval to make areas of the nation’s off-limits for offshore drilling while effectively ending the president’s authority to declare national marine monuments.”

It would also block the Interior secretary from “preventing coal lease sales and require congressional approval for any moratorium on new oil, gas or coal lease sales on public lands or waters.”

In other words, it would defend energy workers from a unilateral attack by the Executive branch, as the Obama administration tried to do in its war on coal.

The plan also would also benefit renewable energy, making it easier for solar, wind, and geothermal power to operate on public lands, as well as offshore.

This is an all-of-the-above energy strategy that allows all forms of energy, renewable and conventional, to compete with fewer obstacles from extreme environmental lawsuits and an activist executive branch.

It’s the kind of strong legislative support that America’s hardworking energy workers deserve.